Edh is able to make stories:
"Ofttimes Niaerdh came into them, a counsellor or rescuer." (p. 581)
Some of these stories will make their way into the mythology of the goddess, Nerthus/Niaerdh. Every myth that we hear or read must have begun as a story made by some individual.
Later, we are shown how Edh does it. Seeing a fine cloak on a merchant sailor, she murmurs:
"'How beautiful that garment...I think Niaerdh wears the like when she visits the other gods." (p. 588)
Everything that she sees becomes part of the story. She sees Niaerdh in the waves:
"Niaerdh was in them with dread and blessing. Hers were the kelp and upcast amber, hers the fish, fowl, seals, great whales, and ships. Hers were the quickening in the land when she came ashore to her Frae, for her sea embraced it, warded it, mourned for its winter death and called it back to life in spring. Very small amidst these things, hers was the child she had kept in this world." (pp. 583-584)
Sea embraces and wards land. The sea deity is paramount. Niaerdh is everywhere, omnipresent, one goddess. A potential peaceful world religion.
4 comments:
Or it could have begun as a mystical vision 'sent' from the God/Goddess.
I very much doubt proto-Germanics would have embraced a peaceful religion. They lived for raiding and blood-feuds.
They wouldn't. The peaceful stage would have to come later when the religion had spread further and after Floris as the goddess had got Veleda to change her message.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: We certainly see a LOT of that Germanic blood-lust in your Antonine books.
Paul: No, even assuming Anderson's Veleda scenario slowing it, Christianity would have eventually spread among the Germanics. Nor am I so confident Veleda's new religion would have become all that peaceful, because to succeed and spread she would have needed to remain bloodthirsty herself. Recall how Anderson showed Veleda's new religion fading away to being forgotten after she became peaceful.
Ad astra! Sean
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